Destroyer of Worlds

Maybe at some level Oppenheimer was a psychopath. And that is why he was chosen to lead the Manhattan Project. And that is why there is high drama with Strauss, and the differences with Teller. And the split personality that cannot resist the adulation and attribution of having won America the War, but on the other hand has to live with the horrors of the outcome. The sins of Oppenheimer are the failing of mankind itself - in spite of the sheer destructiveness of its creations we tread the very same paths time after time. Nolan departs from the storytelling of Interstellar and Inception, and delivers a drama with sensitivity and a poignant sense of history

15/20

Man of Iron

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is Iron Man, in Iron Man III, with or without the eponymous battle suit. Faced with the challenge of the unknown Mandarin, Tony Stark must save Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), right hand man  James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) and the entire US leadership - after challenging the Mandarin to open combat. The journey takes Tony Stark to faraway Tennessee and the combat between the once-spurned villian Adrian Killiach (Guy Pearce) and his nefarious scheme, and our superhero, is as intense as it has ever been in the Iron Man franchise. Iron Man III delivers, and delivers well, and for some reason trails off with Mark Ruffalo and the promise of more to come

13.5/20

Action Unlimited

Do we really need to get into the script here? The irrepressible Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) with his equally irrepressible one-liners. Captain America (Chris Evans) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) shoulder to shoulder in their fight against evil – well, at least till and when the Hulk is is one of his moods. The irrepressible Thor (Chris Helmsworth) and the gorgeous Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) round off the superhero set. The mission – to stop Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in his tracks as he hunts for the Tesseract – a source of great and dangerous power. Never a dull moment (would have been a travesty with this cast), and an all-out commercial entertainer, The Avengers, needless to say, was a resounding success of 2012

13/20

Shadows of the Mind

The first installment taught the audience to stick to deductive reasoning and not to be carried away by the (seemingly) occult. I am not sure what the second installment did, other than remind the audience of the theatrical elements so successfully used in the first installment. The predictive action sequences were hackneyed. The Europe-wide intrigue was anything but menacing. The incursion into Germany and chase sequences distinctly smelt steampunk way before WWI let alone WWII. In the end, we got a reasonably watchable thriller circa 1900, where the deductive reasoning element seemed to have headed to Brighton on holiday (or, case in point, shown in certain hurried sequences). Am not sure if Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows reeked of Cossacks, but it surely smacked of a light-touch and un-originality. And that too from Guy Ritchie. Tch

11.5/20

Iron Age - Part II

Director Jon Favreau clearly realizes that he has a good (read lucrative) thing going, and wants to keep his powder dry for later installments, as far as Iron Man 2– the second installment of the irrepressible Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark aka Iron Man, is concerned. This superhero clearly differentiates himself from the rest of the save-the-world pack on two counts (a) his identity is out in the open (b) he is singularly immodest. With a cast that clearly “trades up” from the first installment, Iron Man II runs through Tony’s idiosyncratic jaunts, in particular handing over the Stark empire to Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) on what appears to be a whim, and an impulsive participation in the Monaco GP that reveals potential supervillian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke). Lt Col James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) brings the voice of reason, the Hammer empire headed by the unscrupulous Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is all about bare-knuckles corporate rivalry, and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) ups the glamour quotient substantially. Endnote – this movie keeps you wholesomely entertained, and waiting for more from Tony Stark. Mission accomplished for now
13/20

Super-Sleuths

Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law play unconventional super-sleuths as Guy Ritchie boldly re-incarnates Sherlock Holmes. At first (and, especially, not having read the graphic novel), it appears that this is a more of a mix of the typical graphic novel elements - mature themes encompassing the dark occult, complex relationships and the like - than vintage Holmes. The movie eases up after a while, and in the end, when all is clarified, you may be forgiven for having believed somewhere along the line that this was a bit too noveau a reincarnation. Irene Adler adds a classic touch to the melange, and the female leads as well as the villian and his retinue, are exceedingly well-developed characters. An easy watch, with new dimensions to offer on the central character, an out-and-out hit, and a great entertainer that does not falter

16/20

Five Degrees

Crime and Punishment and perdition lends itself easily to the moviemaking medium. Before I begin to sound like the celebrity hosts at the Oscars with their hackneyed one-liners let me quickly say that I just happened to catch up with several movies of the same genre in rapid succession, and cannot currently resist the temptation to rank them in a continuum ranging from the purely amoral to the redemption tales.

Joint #5: The Flock and Lonely Hearts: Do you like your porn served freshly killed and/or amputated? Gorno (gore + porno) is apparently the new rage - with movies like Saw and Hostel running into several delightful sequels. Thankfully movies like The Flock (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473356/) serve as some degree of anodyne. Did anyone notice the resurrection of a leaner meaner Richard Gere? Adventurous war photographer in The Hunting Party, and keeping tabs on crimes of passion offenders in The Flock - this movie shows the lengths of depravity that affection can lead to. Same with Lonely Hearts (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0441774/) - John Travolta, Jared Leto and Salma Hayek light up the screen and make you retch at the sheer inhumanity of man

#3: Zodiac (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443706/): David Fincher in another brilliant movie about an obsessive chase of a serial killer. Watch for Robert Downey Jr as the obsessed detective here. What does one make of the futility of the search, many years on? Little, it appears. A movie with lots of drama and few conclusions. Fincher is consistently brilliant

#2: Cleaner (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0896798/): Samuel L Jackson is singularly missing from this blog so far. This movie is about those that clean up post a death in the family. Things get messy as crucial evidence is "cleaned" from a murder scene. The movie goes on into explore the moral ambiguities in the protagonist's past, and the effects on his daughter. It ends with a lot for the small family to clean up, with a little help from a friend. Playing around with shades of gray and degrees of right and wrong, an otherwise hackneyed theme is well executed by Samuel L Jackson, Eva Mendes, and Ed Harris - the last being in a pivotal role

#1 Road to Perdition (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0257044/): What is it about Tom Hanks? (Well - there was Paul Newman and Jude Law here too, but, really?!) In Forrest Gump you cry as this man, oblivious to walking hand in hand with history, lives by the simplest of tenets. In Saving Private Ryan, we have no trouble believing that this man is a schoolteacher as well as a consummate leader of men on the battlefield. In Apollo 13, we live the space dream gone horribly wrong and rejoice at survival against all odds. Really, what is it about this man?! The perdition of Mike Sullivan Sr (Tom Hanks) lies in protecting his surviving son from the damnation of hell that is likely to eventually befall all gangsters on account of their chosen path. If I were to attempt to summarize this movie in a single sentence, I would say thus - Tom Hanks is a gangster, is unfairly set upon, avenges his family, and is survived by a son untainted by evil. And having summarized thus, I can categorically say that such a summary completely fails to capture the evocation, the emotional highs and lows, and the superb performances in the movie. This is among the best movies that I have ever seen, period. This is about legacy, about what you are remembered by, about what you live by. In a Depression and in a world of gangsters, and with your hands tainted by innumerable killings in the course of your profession, if you are remembered by your son for your goodness and resolve, you are truly noble. If the Corleones draw you by the sheer thrill of their acts and way of life, the perdition of Tom Hanks actually makes you believe that a gangster can be truly noble at heart
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PS: American high society is pretentious (who isn't?) and flaunts many trappings of Brit high society while never failing to castigate it at the same time. Saw Woody Harrelson in an unexpectedly brilliant role in The Walker (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783608/) where he cleans up his complicity in a high society murder with reserve and panache! And on Mr Hanks - a relatively simpler role of leveraging disgruntled CIA officers (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and high society ladies bored and with nothing to do, really (Julia Roberts) to spark off - hold your breath - a counter-offensive against Russia in Afghanistan(!) in Charlie Wilson's War (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472062/)

Looking at these posts, I cant help feeling that we live in a Golden Age of movies with so many brilliant performers and scripts, both new and resurrected, aided by the greatest heights cinematography and sould editing has ever attained thanks to technology. And that in itself makes maintaining a movie blog (currently with zero readership) worthwhile.

Children of Modern Men

Currently, The Chronicles of Narnia - Prince Caspian (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499448/) vies with Iron Man (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/) for the US box office sweepstakes (#1 and #2 respectively) as well as remarkably high accolades (8.0 and 8.3 respectively on IMDB, currently). The latter is truly a remarkable movie. It is my hypothesis that the birth of the genre called the graphic novel has lifted the comic genre to a whole new stratosphere of consummate acting and emotive drama, with the so-called superpowers as a mere backdrop. Batman Begins starts the trend to my mind, and it shown so signs of abatement till I guess the Disney pantheon is exhausted. And of Prince Caspian - well, what can I say save it is a children's movie and best not reviewed by me. And with all due credit to authors and scriptwriters of *similar* genre, teleportation from London's subways and LOTR like vistas are beginning to get me down more than a little

Diane Lane (and Donald Sutherland) excel in Fierce People (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401420/) but the movie certainly does not. The analogy that runs through the movie is a fairly weak hypothesis, the similarity of tribal ritual and those of the well-heeled - well, whoever labelled the latter as saints anyway? The tribal inserts are discordant at times and one cannot help but think that there is a singularly misplaced expectation that the audience expects some form of "barbaric/ primitive" behavior from the tribe, which the moviemaker is at pains to persuade is surpassed by the urban rich. A bit of a wasted effort, really